My experience so far with MD

[Kiruba Victor]

For me, it's mostly focused on better versions of me with input taken from real life as well as parts of who I actually am.

Eg: 2 to 3 years ago, My daydreams were focused on a version of me who's a successful E-sports player and lives independent, very physically fit and good at dating. Now it's more focused on dream scenarios involving a certain lady I've had feelings for. And real life incidents have added to the daydreams. Eg: a friend's marriage in real life led me to imagine that I had attended it and had a good time when I could not.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

I've been working in jobs for 16 years since 19, have been in my career field for 10 years since I graduated from college. Though I wish that I studied and worked harder. MD sort of clouded my attention, and it made me deaf while I was doing it. This probably explains why I'm still dependent at 35, which is embarrassing. But what can I do. 

[Kiruba Victor]

Honestly, I don't think the start of MD is exactly within our control. What starts as casual evasion from reality turns to full on escapism. Like they say in the movie Inception, "The dream has become their reality". Maybe if life turns better, then it will be in check. I still have a lot to experience. I'm in my early 20's. Work life is yet to come.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Sometimes I think MD is a habit I shouldn't have ever started. I didn't live in the real world when I was 12. If you know what I mean. I wasn't old enough to realize that what I was doing was dangerous and would significantly impact my life and everybody in it. It was over my mom's awareness and I had no idea how she'd be once she finally found out what's going on in my head. When I became an adult, I had high hopes that I was going to have an amazing life, and it might've, if it weren't for my MD. Even though MD sprung on my happy emotions and positive thinking. It's such an ironic twist of how life works out so incompatibly to your own frame of thinking and escapism. Real life is hard. It's depressing. It's Life! You do have to suck it up, one way or the other. I just didn't know that as a kid! Now I know...but everybody knows about what I did now. Honestly, I don't find it fair that I was born with a brain that's so different, special and unique that I can't get with the program. And I mean society-wise. So everybody around me perpetually carries on like I come from another planet. So they conclude that I'm not worthy of the same life enjoyments and pleasures as them. It's soulfully detrimental when you think of it. Then you stop to think, why me, how in the hell did I get there? Mother Nature. Human Kind. It's a very unpredictable place to be. It's a living, breathing roller coaster. You will never know what you'll get. I was never brilliant enough in my whole life to see this as a fact until my adulthood. My point is when you start something...and you think it will bring no harm to your course of life. Ask yourself that question again in 20 years time. You'll bite yourself in the butt. Especially when you're surrounded by family and near ones who don't trust you any longer, because they think your a nutcase daydreaming all day long—and they comment on your glazed eyes every 5 minutes. My point being, normal people will never understand that your a beautiful person with a different way of looking at the world around you. 

[Kiruba Victor]

I'm also in a similar situation. Not been very good at making friends, but I'm slowly improving. I've always wanted to be the center of attention in a group, so my dreams have that in common. Also, I've never had relationships in my life. All of the things which I'm not good at, in my dreams, these things are the focus of the version of me in them. And of late, a girl whom I've had a big crush on, has also taken the spotlight in them. I find myself speaking words out of dreams and doing movements in real life.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

My MD is always a better version of me, but with nothing taken out of real life. In reality, I have to seriously improve myself, because I find it extremely hard to make new friends. Most people think I'm too quiet and sort of timid of them. Although, I hate to think this of myself, it's very true. I'm not exactly the most confident around other people. This has been a burden on me for years. Most people I've met and known didn't keep in touch with me and left the county for good. I see their pictures on Facebook, but don't reconnect with them. COVID has made it unbearably hard for me to break the ice and get socially active. I can only talk with others on zoom and Microsoft Team. I work remotely at home, so I create stories of events and situations that happen only in my head.